


Raw

by zzoaozz



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol, Heavy Angst, Language, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-07
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-03-28 04:54:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13896699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zzoaozz/pseuds/zzoaozz
Summary: Set after the episode, All Good Intentions. One spoiler. Pure raw emotions.





	Raw

Sam pulled the note down off the refrigerator. Dean was on a supply run. He crept up to the door of the room they used as a living room and peered in. Castiel was there nose-deep in a thick tome of arcane magic. A deep furrow of concentration was just visible over the top. The younger Winchester nodded to himself and hurried to his room where he had cached a wooden crate of Tennessee Moonshine in old fashioned looking half gallon jugs. One he hid deep in his closet, the other three he carried back down to the living room snagging a couple of tall glasses as he passed the counter. He thumped down onto the coffee table in front of the angel causing him to peer over the book curiously.”  
  
He hefted one of the jugs almost reverently and presented it to Castiel. "I couldn't carry the whole liquor store, Cas, but I do have two more of these with your name on it.”  
  
Castiel lifted the oddly shaped jug and gazed at the label. I don’t…”  
  
“Not literally, dude”, Sam interrupted with a fond smile.  
  
Sam talked about their plans to secure the ingredients for the portal, about how good Jack had turned out to be and how hard he was trying, anything but what he really wanted to know. He kept Castiel’s glass full as he nursed his own. It was good shine, smooth, easy, by the time its sweet fire began to show itself a normal person would be too far gone to realize just how potent the stuff was. Sam was banking on his instinct that even if Cas did notice the amount of alcohol in the beverage, he would just dismiss it out of inexperience.  
  
Sam was just beginning to imagine what Dean would do to him if he actually gave the fallen angel alcohol poisoning when Cas sighed and looked over towards the chair Dean usually occupied when he was home. His face was soft, relaxed. It made him look younger, but that somber look was still there, the one he had worn since his latest return from death. Even Dean had finally admitted that Cas was not all right, but being Dean, had ordered Sam to give the angel space and some time alone. Unlike his brother, Sam was beginning to suspect that it was the space between them that kept tearing their strange little family to pieces, quite literally sometimes. Now, he felt the time was right.  
  
“So, Cas, can I ask you something?”  
  
“You can ask me anything, Sam. Although, you don’t normally ask before you ask. Do you?”  
  
His brow wrinkled as he puzzled over that a moment. and Sam suddenly saw why people were always calling Castiel cute. “Cas, tell me what happened out there after Jack woke you up. What did you see. What changed you so much?” Sam suppressed a shiver as he thought of Donatello reduced to a drooling vegetable at the hospital where they had dumped him.  
  
Castiel hesitated then met Sam’s eyes with his own, and they were glowing slightly, a silvery sheen over the deep blue. He took another deep gulp of the booze and nodded once.  
  
“I woke up to nothing. No sound except my own voice, no light, no warmth or cold or up or down, nothing Sammy.”  
  
Sam’s eyes widened slightly, Castiel had never called him that before. Their relationship had always been much more formal than the one Dean shared with the celestial being.  
  
“I called out, I screamed, I ran, but there was nothing. Not the nothing of an empty room or an open field or the space between the stars, but the absence of anything at all. Can you imagine that?”  
  
Sam swallowed harshly and shook his head no.  
  
“But just when despair was taking hold of me, something was there, something I woke up. It was just part of the darkness at first, but then it looked like me.”  
  
Sam’s jaw dropped in absolute amazement as Castiel described his encounter with the interdimensional being. He wanted to interrupt and ask if Chuck was the same as this entity if there might be more out there. Before he could break into the narrative though, Castiel began describing the experiences that the creature made him relive and whether it was the moonshine or the flood of emotions spilling from the angel, he poured it all out without holding back.  
  
The naked pain, shame, and self-loathing in the gravelly voice reverberated against Sam’s own remorse and doubt and brought tears surging dangerously close to the surface. He wanted to say something or maybe gather his friend in his arms and hug him until he heard ribs cracking, but he was paralyzed.  
  
Finally, Cas faltered to a stop and Sam struggled to drag up words of sympathy. “I, I c-can’t even imagine what it was like to relive all that, to feel yourself die over and over. To relive the pain would be more than most people could even survive, let alone stay unchanged.” He opened his mouth looking for something more meaningful, more eloquent to say, but Castiel shook his head.  
  
“No Sam, it was not the deaths. They didn’t bother me. The dying is a good thing if it protects Dean… and all the people I love. It was remembering before the dying. Seeing it through open eyes. All those millions and millions of years I lived without living at all. I was a slave Sammy, without knowing. I did as I was told. I pretended to feel what I was told to pretend. Maybe sometimes, some of the feelings were real, but they were so far apart, and they faded so fast. I was dead. Just, a – a weapon. I was told to love humanity, so I loved them. I was told to kill humans to teach them their place; so, I killed them. I was told that angels were brothers and that we were the children of God; then, I was told to murder my brothers for thinking for themselves and questioning father’s plan. I was dead then, empty as this, this meat suit, I wear so that I can stay here, be with my family.”  
  
“Cas…” Sam whispered, “I- we didn’t know.”  
Blue eyes, now glowing with a halo-like ring of light bored into his across the table. “I didn’t know either until I touched HIM.”  
  
“Him?” Sam asked, “the entity?”  
  
“Dean.”  
  
“What do you mean, Cas?”  
  
“That was when I changed; when everything changed. Sometimes it hurts so bad, here,” He thumped a fist against his chest, “especially when he is disappointed with me. Sometimes I remember the mistakes I’ve made, and the shame makes me want to crawl into the deepest, most forgotten hole in the ground and disappear. Sometimes, I wept because I had to come back from death and face my failures. But seeing it all again from outside my life… If something happened to one of you that I could have prevented, if any of you made a sacrifice because I wasn’t here to volunteer instead, if I never got to see Dean again, I couldn’t bear that. I had to come back to him… to all of you, my family.”  
  
Sam sat forward staring into the angel’s eyes wondering how he had seen this from the very beginning but never realized just what it was he was seeing. “Cas,” his voice vibrated with the emotions he was holding back, “Cas, tell me about the ‘profound bond’ you and Dean share. Tell me everything.  
  
“Everything, the bond, it is everything.” He nodded vaguely.  
  
“Cas, explain it so that an ordinary, human can understand it,” Sam asked firmly.  
  
Maybe it was the fine hooch or maybe it was the spell of being outside that was still wrapped around the seraph like an icy draft. “I was not supposed to heal Dean. I was supposed to collect his tainted soul from Hell and slam it back into his resurrected body. He was broken. Zachariah and Uriel, they thought that he would be easy to convince that way. He would probably agree to be Michael’s Sword for the promise of a painless death and straight passage to Heaven afterwards. He was… he was splintered when I saw him. I was going to obey, I swear I was, until I touched him. Then I felt, really felt, things I had no name for, emotions so strong that I felt sick. I looked into his soul and even broken and tainted, it was the most beautiful thing I had ever laid my eyes upon.” The angel closed his eyes as he remembered that moment, and the bittersweet smile on his face made Sam’s breath catch.  
  
“What did you do?” Sam whispered softly, afraid to break the spell.  
  
“I fell.” Castiel opened his eyes only to stare beyond Sam into the past. “I disobeyed. I grasped his soul, but I hid it away from Heaven and Hell alike, deep inside my own grace. I gathered my mojo, as he calls it, and I ripped a hole in time and space, not like the rifts Jack can open. More like the place angel wings are kept when they take a vessel. Well, the place they were kept before I burned them all to ash.” His jaw tightened in pain so obvious that Sam felt it in his own chest. “I kept him there for years or maybe decades, time does not flow there. I rebuilt his body, cell by cell, and I used my own grace to burn away every trace of Hell’s taint and to mend his shattered mind and soul. I guided him through the memories of his life showing him what was true and what was lies Alistair and the other demons told him. I lived his entire life. I knew what they were asking him to do in the name of prophecy was wrong. I had already disobeyed, but in that moment, I rebelled. I chose Dean over Heaven, over my Father, over myself, over everything that I thought I believed in until that moment. That was the first moment that I lived. The first moment I knew that there were things worth dying to protect. I whispered into his soul that his will was his own, that he could say no, because I knew he would not believe me when I said the same thing in words later on. That is the one choice in my life that I have never, will never regret. Dean is worth everything, any price.”  
  
“I chose him.” Cas stated again calmly with an almost peaceful little smile. “You know, I poured so much of my grace into him, that I never really recovered. He thinks that I left him, when he needed me. That I put my own agenda before him, but I never did, Sam. The purest part of me is hidden away inside his soul where nothing can ever corrupt it. Not even me. I still have part of him inside of me too. I kept the little splinters of his soul that would not heal. He fears the worst of his pain, the darkness that Hell tortured into him, but I keep it inside me, where it can’t hurt him. That way, I always have part of him with me too. One he doesn’t miss and no one else can take.”  
  
"Cas," Sam wondered with dawning understanding, “I knew you loved him, but this... And he doesn't know?"  
  
"He did not ask for any of this, to be chosen to fulfill a prophecy, for my interference in the natural course of his life. He didn't deserve any of the horrors and responsibilities laid on his shoulders. He is just one human, a perfect, righteous human. I nearly destroyed him. Heaven and Hell used him. He had to suffer so much, pay an unbearable price. It wasn't fair!"  
  
"And you think what they asked of you was?" Dean growled from the door startling both of them. his voice was rough and low with raw emotion, as he cleared the distance to the table in two long steps. Sam leapt away from the table just before his brother flung the offending furniture out of the way so that he glared down at the angel with his hands on his hips and green eyes burning with fury. “They sent you into fucking Hell, Cas, to save a stranger for their plans. They told you just what they wanted you to know and most of that was lies. How many angels died to get me out? You were the only one of your unit that made it. You told me so.”  
  
“They used you at every turn, and you still tried your best to save Heaven and Earth! And what did you get for that? Cast out, reprogrammed, angel blades shoved through your heart. Dammit Cas! They never deserved you. Not those self-righteous douchebags in Heaven, not fucking Chuck who cut and run when his children needed a fucking father because he was disappointed, and not me either Cas.”  
  
“Dean…”  
  
“Shut up, Cas, and let me say this.”  
  
Sam stood frozen, unable to look away, barely breathing as his brother at long last tore down the walls that held back every emotion he did not want to face.  
  
“You saved me when I was a stranger.” Dean’s voice was full of grief that threatened to override the anger. “You gave me your grace and put me back together and then hid the price you paid from me. The first time I saw you, instead of being grateful, I stabbed you in the chest. You came to me when I called you, even though I only called you when I needed something. I know that you watched over me when the nightmares were bad, I can still remember the feeling of your wings wrapped around me and your light guiding me to happy memories instead of the Hell inside my mind. Fuck it, Cas. I thought you weren’t coming back when Lucifer killed you the last time. It was just too much. I lost Mom, I lost Jack, and I lost you. I didn’t see how anything could ever be right again. I couldn’t find any hope anywhere. I couldn’t find any peace in the bottle. I needed you and I thought you were gone forever.”  
  
Dean grabbed Castiel by the collars of his coat and dragged him up to his feet. “You say you are not going to lose the people you love ever again, well neither am I. I will get Mom and Jack back. I will protect Jody and the girls. I will keep Sam safe. And you Castiel, Angel of the fucking Lord, WILL NOT LEAVE ME EVER AGAIN. You just get that through your feather brain right now. You are mine. My fucking angel.”  
  
“Dean,” Cas began only to be cut off by a hard mouth crashing down on his with such raw passion that he responded to it unthinkingly, closing his eyes and swaying into the taller man.  
  
Sam stood and slowly backed away never taking his eyes off his brother and his friend locked together in something too hungry, too desperate to be called a kiss. His mind was silent for once, in shock, some part of him acknowledged. He almost tripped over the empty jug that had rolled away from the overturned table. He exhaled as the other two remained oblivious of him long enough for him to get through the door into the kitchen and shut it behind him before sinking to the floor with his back pressed to it trembling all over.


End file.
